I've been saying for a while I really want to start building my own robots as well as playing with commercial offerings like the Pleos, so when my boyfriend gifted me a robot kit someone gave to him a while ago (it's way below his level of ability but great for a beginner like me), I had the perfect opportunity to start. Some of you are probably old hands at this sort of project and pictures of this particular kit seem to be quite common online, but I figured it would be fun to share anyway.
Here's a picture of the box. All very exciting to look at!
I didn't spend too much time looking at the picture though; I just dove straight into the instructions, which were rather straightforward, but also long and very easy to get wrong! I came very close to soldering some parts on the board in the wrong place by getting some numbers confused, which was the point at which my new creation got her name: 'ROOMBA14', with the 14 being the number of the component that almost ruined everything.
Apparently for a complete newb I did a quite good job of the soldering, although it took me a while to be totally comfortable with the soldering process.
The hardest part ended up being the gearbox, of all things! Trying to organise all the gears according to the line drawings in the instructions gave me a roaring headache, and some of the screws were near impossible to get into place. Then, with one foot left to attach, my boyfriend picked it up for a look and said, "Hm, these gears look wrong, somehow." Luckily for him, after further examination he agreed they were assembled exactly as the instructions dictated, or he would have been reassembling the thing himself!
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My finished project looks a little different to the one on the box, since I wasn't able to get my wires into those yellow conduits - the green wire is wrapped so that it barely reaches to where it needs to be plugged in, and I'll probably need to remove the board from the gearbox to move it to a better position so there's not so much strain on it. You may also be able to see a corner of paper poking out from under the board on the lower side: I decided to insulate all the exposed bottoms of screws coming through from the gearbox in case they made contact with my solder joints. But it's mostly the same sort of thing!
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And then, of course, the most fun (and nerve-wracking) part is switching on your finished creation. I decided the Pleos should be there for the occasion, but standing at a safe distance. You can tell from my poor trembling hand that I'm actually expecting the whole house to explode, and then when I actually switch Roomba on for the first time... well, I guess it's a good thing I didn't scream or do anything even more embarrassing.
https://vimeo.com/66874167Boyfriend has informed me that my next project with this robot is to replace the existing microprocessor with its static program (that's the long black thing in the circuit board picture with the two red dots) with another one that can be programmed, so we can make the robot do things other than the escape robot routine. I have a couple of projects in mind:
- Use the IR transmitter to talk to the Pleos; watch as confusion ensues.
- Reverse the existing programming somewhat: instead of a robot that avoids obstacles, how about a 'guard robot' that attacks visitors?
